Part 14 (1/2)
FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIES.
Dr. Johnson in Bolt Court--His motley Household--His Life there--Still existing--The gallant ”Lumber Troop”--Reform Bill Riots--Sir Claudius Hunter--Cobbett in Bolt Court--The Bird Boy--The Private Soldier--In the House--Dr. Johnson in Gough Square--Busy at the Dictionary--Goldsmith in Wine Office Court--Selling ”The Vicar of Wakefield”--Goldsmith's Troubles--Wine Office Court--The Old ”Ches.h.i.+re Cheese.”
Of all the nooks of London a.s.sociated with the memory of that good giant of literature, Dr. Johnson, not one is more sacred to those who love that great and wise man than Bolt Court. To this monastic court Johnson came in 1776, and remained till that December day in 1784, when a procession of all the learned and worthy men who honoured him followed his body to its grave in the Abbey, near the feet of Shakespeare and by the side of Garrick. The great scholar, whose ways and sayings, whose rough hide and tender heart, are so familiar to us--thanks to that faithful parasite who secured an immortality by getting up behind his triumphal chariot--came to Bolt Court from Johnson's Court, whither he had flitted from Inner Temple Lane, where he was living when the young Scotch barrister who was afterwards his biographer first knew him. His strange household of fretful and disappointed almspeople seems as well known as our own. At the head of these pensioners was the daughter of a Welsh doctor, (a blind old lady named Williams), who had written some trivial poems; Mrs. Desmoulins, an old Staffords.h.i.+re lady, her daughter, and a Miss Carmichael. The relations.h.i.+ps of these fretful and quarrelsome old maids Dr. Johnson has himself sketched, in a letter to Mr. and Mrs. Thrale:--”Williams hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll (Miss Carmichael) loves none of them.” This Levett was a poor eccentric apothecary, whom Johnson supported, and who seems to have been a charitable man.
The annoyance of such a menagerie of angular oddities must have driven Johnson more than ever to his clubs, where he could wrestle with the best intellects of the day, and generally retire victorious. He had done nearly all his best work by this time, and was sinking into the sere and yellow leaf, not, like Macbeth, with the loss of honour, but with love, obedience, troops of friends, and golden opinions from all sorts of people. His t.i.tanic labour, the Dictionary, he had achieved chiefly in Gough Square; his ”Ra.s.selas”--that grave and wise Oriental story--he had written in a few days, in Staple's Inn, to defray the expenses of his mother's funeral. In Bolt Court he, however, produced his ”Lives of the Poets,” a n.o.ble compendium of criticism, defaced only by the bitter Tory depreciation of Milton, and injured by the insertion of many worthless and the omission of several good poets.
It is pleasant to think of some of the events that happened while Johnson lived in Bolt Court. Here he exerted himself with all the ardour of his nature to soothe the last moments of that wretched man, Dr. Dodd, who was hanged for forgery. From Bolt Court he made those frequent excursions to the Thrales, at Streatham, where the rich brewer and his brilliant wife gloried in the great London lion they had captured. To Bolt Court came Johnson's friends Reynolds and Gibbon, and Garrick, and Percy, and Langton; but poor Goldsmith had died before Johnson left Johnson's Court. To Bolt Court he stalked home the night of his memorable quarrel with Dr. Percy, no doubt regretting the violence and boisterous rudeness with which he had attacked an amiable and gifted man. From Bolt Court he walked to service at St. Clement's Church on the day he rejoiced in comparing the animation of Fleet Street with the desolation of the Hebrides. It was from Bolt Court Boswell drove Johnson to dine with General Paoli, a drive memorable for the fact that on that occasion Johnson uttered his first and only recorded pun.
Johnson was at Bolt Court when the Gordon Riots broke out, and he describes them to Mrs. Thrale. Boswell gives a pleasant sketch of a party at Bolt Court, when Mrs. Hall (a sister of Wesley) was there, and Mr. Allen, a printer; Johnson produced his silver salvers, and it was ”a great day.” It was on this occasion that the conversation fell on apparitions, and Johnson, always superst.i.tious to the last degree, told the story of hearing his mother's voice call him one day at Oxford (probably at a time when his brain was overworked). On this great occasion also, Johnson, talked at by Mrs. Hall and Mrs. Williams at the same moment, gaily quoted the line from the _Beggars' Opera_,--
”But two at a time there's no mortal can bear,”
and Boswell playfully compared the great man to Captain Macheath.
Imagine Mrs. Williams, old and peevish; Mrs. Hall, lean, lank, and preachy; Johnson, rolling in his chair like Polyphemus at a debate; Boswell, stooping forward on the perpetual listen; Mr. Levett, sour and silent; Frank, the black servant, proud of the silver salvers--and you have the group as in a picture.
In Bolt Court we find Johnson now returning from pleasant dinners with Wilkes and Garrick, Malone and Dr. Burney; now sitting alone over his Greek Testament, or praying with his black servant, Frank. We like to picture him on that Good Friday morning (1783), when he and Boswell, returning from service at St. Clement's, rested on the stone seat at the garden-door in Bolt Court, talking about gardens and country hospitality.
Then, finally, we come to almost the last scene of all, when the sick man addressed to his kind physician, Brocklesby, that pathetic pa.s.sage of Shakespeare's,--
”Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow; Raze out the written troubles of the brain; And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?”
Round Johnson's dying bed gathered many wise and good men. To Burke he said, ”I must be in a wretched state indeed, when your company would not be a delight to me.” To another friend he remarked solemnly, but in his old grand manner, ”Sir, you cannot conceive with what acceleration I advance towards death.” Nor did his old vehemence and humour by any means forsake him, for he described a man who sat up to watch him ”as an idiot, sir; awkward as a turnspit when first put into the wheel, and sleepy as a dormouse.” His remaining hours were spent in fervent prayer.
The last words he uttered were those of benediction upon the daughter of a friend who came to ask his blessing.
Some years before Dr. Johnson's death, when the poet Rogers was a young clerk of literary proclivities at his father's bank, he one day stole surrept.i.tiously to Bolt Court, to daringly show some of his fledgeling poems to the great Polyphemus of literature. He and young Maltby, an ancestor of the late Bishop of Durham, crept blus.h.i.+ngly through the quiet court, and on arriving at the sacred door on the west side, ascended the steps and knocked at the door; but the awful echo of that knocker struck terror to the young _debutants'_ hearts, and before Frank Barber, the Doctor's old negro footman, could appear, the two lads, like street-boys who had perpetrated a mischievous runaway knock, took to their heels and darted back into noisy Fleet Street. Mr. Jesse, who has collected so many excellent anecdotes, some even original, in his three large volumes on ”London's Celebrated Characters and Places,” says that the elder Mr. Disraeli, singularly enough, used in society to relate an almost similar adventure as a youth. Eager for literary glory, but urged towards the counter by his sober-minded relations, he enclosed some of his best verses to the celebrated Dr. Johnson, and modestly solicited from the terrible critic an opinion of their value. Having waited some time in vain for a reply, the ambitious Jewish youth at last (December 13, 1784) resolved to face the lion in his den, and rapping tremblingly (as his predecessor, Rogers), heard with dismay the knocker echo on the metal. We may imagine the feelings of the young votary at the shrine of learning, when the servant (probably Frank Barber), who slowly opened the door, informed him that Dr. Johnson had breathed his last only a few short hours before.
Mr. Timbs reminds us of another story of Dr. Johnson, which will not be out of place here. It is an excellent ill.u.s.tration of the keen sagacity and forethought of that great man's mind. One evening Dr. Johnson, looking from his dim Bolt Court window, saw the slovenly lamp-lighter of those days ascending a ladder (just as Hogarth has drawn him in the ”Rake's Progress”), and fill the little receptacle in the globular lamp with detestable whale-oil. Just as he got down the ladder the dull light wavered out. Skipping up the ladder again, the son of Prometheus lifted the cover, thrust the torch he carried into the heated vapour rising from the wick, and instantly the ready flame sprang restored to life.
”Ah,” said the old seer, ”one of these days the streets of London will be lighted by smoke.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. JOHNSON'S HOUSE IN BOLT COURT (_see page 112_).]
Johnson's house (No. 8), according to Mr. n.o.ble, was not destroyed by fire in 1819, as Mr. Timbs and other writers a.s.sert. The house destroyed was Bensley the printer's (next door to No. 8), the successor of Johnson's friend, Allen, who in 1772 published Manning's Saxon, Gothic, and Latin Dictionary, and died in 1780. In Bensley's destructive fire all the plates and stock of Dallaway's ”History of Suss.e.x” were consumed. Johnson's house, says Mr. n.o.ble, was in 1858 purchased by the Stationers' Company, and fitted up as a cheap school (six s.h.i.+llings a quarter). In 1861 Mr. Foss, Master of the Company, initiated a fund, and since then a university scholars.h.i.+p has been founded--_sicitur ad astra_. The back room, first floor, in which the great man died, had been pulled down by Mr. Bensley, to make way for a staircase. Bensley was one of the first introducers of the German invention of steam-printing.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A TEA PARTY AT DR. JOHNSON'S (_see page 113_).]
At ”Dr. Johnson's” tavern, established forty years ago (now the Albert Club), the well-known society of the ”Lumber Troop” once drained their porter and held their solemn smokings. This gallant force of supposit.i.tious fighting men ”came out” with great force during the Reform Riots of 1830. These useless disturbances originated in a fussy, foolish warning letter, written by John Key, the Lord Mayor elect (he was generally known in the City as Don Key after this), to the Duke of Wellington, then as terribly unpopular with the English Reformers as he had been with the French after the battle of Waterloo, urging him (the duke) if he came with King William and Queen Adelaide to dine with the new Lord Mayor, (his wors.h.i.+pful self), to come ”strongly and sufficiently guarded.” This imprudent step greatly offended the people, who were also just then much vexed with the severities of Peel's obnoxious new police. The result was that the new king and queen (for the not over-beloved George IV. had only died in June of that year) thought it better to decline coming to the City festivities altogether.
Great, then, was even the Tory indignation, and the fattest alderman trotted about, eager to discuss the grievance, the waste of half-cooked turtle, and the general folly and enormity of the Lord Mayor elect's conduct. Sir Claudius Hunter, who had shared in the Lord Mayor's fears, generously marched to his aid. In a published statement that he made, he enumerated the force available for the defence of the (in his mind) endangered City in the following way:--
Ward Constables 400 Fellows.h.i.+p, Ticket, and Tackle Porters 250 Firemen 150 Corn Porters 100 Extra men hired 130 City Police or own men 54 Tradesmen with emblems in the procession 300 Some gentlemen called the Lumber Troopers 150 The Artillery Company 150 The East India Volunteers 600
Total of all comers 2,284
In the same statement Sir Claudius says:--”The Lumber Troop are a respectable smoking club, well known to every candidate for a seat in Parliament for London, and most famed for the quant.i.ty of tobacco they consume and the porter they drink, which, I believe (from my own observation, made nineteen years ago, when I was a candidate for that office), is the only liquor allowed. They were to have had no pay, and I am sure they would have done their best.”
Along the line of procession, to oppose this civic force, the right wors.h.i.+pful but foolish man reckoned there would be some 150,000 persons.
With all these aldermanic fears, and all these irritating precautions, a riot naturally took place. On Monday, November 8th, that glib, unsatisfactory man, Orator Hunt, the great demagogue of the day, addressed a Reform meeting at the Rotunda, in Blackfriars Road. At half-past eleven, when the Radical gentleman, famous for his white hat (the lode-star of faction), retired, a man suddenly waved a tricolour flag (it was the year, remember, of the Revolution in Paris), with the word ”Reform” painted upon it, and a preconcerted cry was raised by the more violent of, ”Now for the West End!” About one thousand men then rushed over Blackfriars bridge, shouting, ”Reform!” ”Down with the police!” ”No Peel!” ”No Wellington!” Hurrying along the Strand, the mob first proceeded to Earl Bathurst's, in Downing Street. A foolish gentleman of the house, hearing the cries, came out on the balcony, armed with a brace of pistols, and declared he would fire on the first man who attempted to enter the place. Another gentleman at this moment came out, and very sensibly took the pistols from his friend, on which the mob retired. The rioters were then making for the House of Commons, but were stopped by a strong line of police, just arrived in time from Scotland Yard. One hundred and forty more men soon joined the constables, and a general fight ensued, in which many heads were quickly broken, and the Reform flag was captured. Three of the rioters were arrested, and taken to the watch-house in the Almonry in Westminster. A troop of Royal Horse Guards (blue) remained during the night ready in the court of the Horse Guards, and bands of policemen paraded the streets.
On Tuesday the riots continued. About half-past five p.m., 300 or 400 persons, chiefly boys, came along the Strand, shouting, ”No Peel!” ”Down with the raw lobsters!” (the new police); ”This way, my lads; we'll give it them!” At the back of the menageries at Charing Cross the police rushed upon them, and after a skirmish put them to flight. At seven o'clock the vast crowd by Temple Bar compelled every coachman and pa.s.senger in a coach, as a pa.s.sport, to pull off his hat and shout ”Huzza!” Stones were thrown, and attempts were made to close the gates of the Bar. The City marshals, however, compelled them to be re-opened, and opposed the pa.s.sage of the mob to the Strand, but the pa.s.s was soon forced. The rioters in Pickett Place pelted the police with stones and pieces of wood, broken from the scaffolding of the Law Inst.i.tute, then building in Chancery Lane. Another mob of about 500 persons ran up Piccadilly to Apsley House and hissed and hooted the stubborn, unprogressive old Duke, Mr. Peel, and the police; the constables, however, soon dispersed them. The same evening dangerous mobs collected in Bethnal Green, Spitalfields, and Whitechapel, one party of them displaying tricoloured flags. They broke a lamp and a window or two, but did little else. Alas for poor Sir Claudius and his profound computations! His 2,284 fighting loyal men dwindled down to 600, including even those strange hybrids, the firemen-watermen; and as for the gallant Lumber Troop, they were nowhere visible to the naked eye.
To Bolt Court that scourge of King George III., William Cobbett, came from Fleet Street to sell his Indian corn, for which no one cared, and to print and publish his twopenny _Political Register_, for which the London Radicals of that day hungered. Nearly opposite the office of ”this good hater,” says Mr. Timbs, Wright (late Kearsley) kept shop, and published a searching criticism on Cobbett's excellent English Grammar as soon as it appeared. We only wonder that Cobbett did not reply to him as Johnson did to a friend after he knocked Osborne (the grubbing bookseller of Gray's Inn Gate) down with a blow--”Sir, he was impertinent, and I beat him.”